A multitude of adjustable body supporting assemblies in the form of hospital beds, wheel-chairs and special functions beds have been developed but for a long time it has been felt, that beds and wheel-chairs could be developed to combine more functions, to provide additional important functions, and that such combination could actually result in making such products more attainable and more widely used. Presently marketed products have only limited features, and are usually operated with a motor driven screw drive for each feature which operate at 110 volt, even when the controls by means of relays are made to work on 16 volt or a similar voltage. This voltage reduction does not eliminate the danger from sparks of the 110 volt motors, only reduce the danger at the controls.
The applicant has been working on the development of more-featured body supporting assemblies which could provide a safer and more practical operation and reduce production costs relatively for some time and filed patent applications in regard to certain developments, and a number of disclosure documents in regard to additional developments, which are mainly the subjects of this application, and are based on work and ideas formed in 1976 and 1977.
The applicant has always felt that certain necessities have been neglected, such as for example that hospital beds make no provisions to keep an occupant's head in a proper position, and not to have his head dangerously rolling to the side, especially when falling asleep on an elevated backsupport. Also that more functions could be provided without additional costs by locking devices which would make the same adjusting means perform different functions, and that more comfort could be provided, including better sitting up positions which presently require the transfer of a patient to a chair, and more mobility so that the same bed could serve a sick or handicapped person for various tasks. And that it should include a locker-type side-guard servng as extendable table and to store the necessities of a patient, swinging outward for better access, of service personnel and doctors, but still within the reach of the patient to swing the locker back to a position parallel with the bed. This will finally eliminate the many inconveniences caused to bed-bound persons by attending personnel and others, who move for some reason or other the bed-tables aside without returning them to the bed-side.
Obviously, the present state of the art has not suuficiently eliminated the dangers from the usually used electric current of 110 Volt. Because of the lack of less dangerous equipment, hospitals have accepted and use equipment for hospital rooms, operated on said current of 110 volt, which poses quite a danger, especially as oxygen breathing equipment has very often to be applied to patients in said rooms. In some equipment the hand controls have been reduced to pneumatics or 16 volts, but the motors operate on 110 V.
An very important problem, and a handicap to convalescence is the present absence of convalescent-related comfort in hospital beds. A confinement to a hospital bed weakens a person's muscles, and requires periods of convalescence in sitting up and walking. Since the present hospital beds do not provide any means for properly sitting up, and helping a person into an upright position, this requires presently the attendance of hospital personnel, carrying a person out to a chain, or standing him up for a walk, and this also whenever such person needs to go to the bathroom. Under the present ever rising cost of hospitalization, such services are perforce held to a bare minimum, thereby actually prolonging the convalescence of a patient. A bed as provided by this invention, would permit a person to sit up by himself, to stand up by himself, and in its sitting position to be rolled out with the patient into the air or courts, being in this state very compact, and capable to incorporate some motorised mobility for self-operation.